I already told you that Kellie had to help me with the pictures of the second day in the afternoon because I didn't take any, but she also helped me remember what we had for lunch in the touristy café along with my London ale. It was a very, very British lunch. Kellie had a Cornish pasty, which I recall tasted like a beef pot pie cooked inside a calzone, and I had a smoked salmon and cucumber sandwich. I actually like the idea of a smoked salmon and cucumber sandwich so much that I bought the ingredients to make some when I got home. So...I actually did enjoy at least one traditional English food, but they can keep their Cornish pasties if what Kellie had was a normal example of one.
Anyway, after we ate lunch, we walked probably a quarter of a mile up the street to Buckingham palace. These are all Kellie's pictures. Do not thank me for them.
This is the statue in the center parade area/parking lot. By noon, the early morning lack of tourists was a distant memory. The streets were packed as was every touristy place. I don't honestly know how Kellie got a picture with so few people in it.
Above is Buckingham Palace from the edge of the gold statue. Again, this shot doesn't show the size of the crowd well. Kellie got a well-timed shot.
Here is a shot of the guards. I guess they only wear the tall, furry hats during special occasions. I usually would crop out the gravel, but I wanted you to see that Kellie got this picture from the fence. Between the fence and the palace was about 50 yards of this carefully smoothed red pebble surface. There were no plants or trees. I guess for safety purposes. King Charles was at home, I believe. I think we saw that later on the news. There was no indication on the gate whether the royal Brits were there or not when we were.
You know, looking at the outside of building is a pretty boring thing to do. It is ultimately why I didn't like Oxford a few days later. Standing outside the gates at Buckingham palace wasn't especially thrilling to me either, but they did have some interesting statues in the parade area/parking lot like this man and lion. I do not recall that it had a plaque saying what it was supposed to be. I guess it is simply a man with a lion. Oh, and he has a sledgehammer too.
The statue above is a mate to the man with lion. It is--tada!--a woman with a lion. She has a scythe in her hand instead of a sledgehammer. I do not know the meanings of either statue. If they had plaques, I did not see them.
Finally, for today, this statue of Achilles was given to Arthur, Duke of Wellington, after his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. I read that in the carving on the base. I don't recall who presented the statue to the Duke because it was mostly scratched out and faded.
Ok, after wandering around the streets a bit in the Buckingham palace area and reading some plaques on walls and things, none that were particularly interesting, we hopped back on the Big Bus, and, essentially, rode around the rest of the afternoon instead of walking. The bus went past Westminster Abbey, which we had intended to visit, but at 1:30 or so in the afternoon the line to get in was around the block out of our sight from on the bus. The bus took us by places like St. George's square and the Chelsea Flower show, which are basically parks or green spaces in the city. All the green spaces are pretty much the same, and they all have statues in them, but it's hard to get good pictures of statuary from the bus, even the open top deck. We drove by Kensington palace and the gardens and Hyde Park. Neither Kellie nor I needed to see another palace or another garden. We drove by the Victoria and Albert museum and the Natural History museum. I only remember catching a glimpse of it. We circled up by Baker Street. As we drove past, I looked up the street to the Sherlock Homes museum and the people were shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk from one end of the block to the other. There was no point in trying to get in there, so we didn't get off the bus to walk back to 221 B. We rode the Big Bus until nearly four o'clock looking at things and listening to the tour guide through the ear pieces. By that time, we were starting to get pretty draggy, so when we came to a bus stop close to a Tube entrance, we got off the bus, on the Tube, and went back to the hotel.
By the way, as Hilton Honors member for over 15 years, we tend to stay in Hilton based properties like Hampton Inn. We stayed in a Hampton Inn in London, York, and Nottingham. All were basically the same, but they are nice places to stay, and not too expensive. Plus, they always have a continental breakfast, which also saves $25-$30 a day. Our Hampton Inn London was in a place called Park Royal. Park Royal is seven or eight miles from the center of London in a primarily residential area. It took 30 minutes to get from central London to Park Royal on the Tube on the Piccadilly Line, and most of the trip was above ground. The neighborhoods reminded me a lot of St. Louis with the red brick, two-storey tenement houses stacked side-by-side with the alleyways between and the small, square back yards. Nearly every back yard had laundry drying on a line. I didn't get a picture because we were on the Tube, but I have to comment on something that I saw at one stop along the way. Through the chainlink fence of the Tube station, I could see a park area with playground equipment where children were playing and adults were lying about on the ground sunning or petting their dogs. A normal park scene, right? Well, what was odd to me was that the grass was shaggy and knee-deep. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would be lying around and playing in knee-deep grass in May here in Arkansas unless you really wanted to be covered with ticks and chiggers. I asked Kellie if English folks owned lawnmowers because I began to notice that hardly any of the yards, besides palaces and fancy parks, were trimmed. She didn't know, but I started looking for lawnmowers. I never saw one. By the way, as we traveled 200 miles north through some beautiful farm country from London to Edinburgh, I never saw a tractor until we were on our way back from York to Nottingham. How do they keep their fields tilled, plowed, and planted?
Tomorrow, on Day Three, we head north to Edinburgh on the train.
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